Ricky Ray Rector

For all the issue purist out there. The last guy we won with executed a Mentally Retarded man for political expediency so don't lecture me on Obama's views.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector

This country leans right on the Death Penalty. Don't know why it just does. Its not something to be argued it does. Personally I don't feel like having our candidate having to answer any questions about what he would want done to someone who rapes and kills his wife and children during a debate and having to sound soft like Dukakis did.

Bill Clinton appointed Supreme Court Justices who have been helpful to the left on this issue and on many other liberal issues.

I hate the Death Penalty but running for the Presidency and not giving some support to it is suicide for any candidate and 1988 is the perfect example.

Thank you very much.

Not from me of course, I'm against Death, but the Rector issue may offend Friends of Bill. I dunno. Maybe.

While Bill Clinton may have appointed Justices and Judges friendly to "our side", it was his fault that Rector went to his death.

That issue was one reason I could not support Bill Clinton, it was political opportunism at the expense of a human life. Unacceptable.

By 1992, Bill Clinton was insisting that Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent" and took a position strongly supporting capital punishment. To make his point, he flew home to Arkansas mid-campaign to affirm that the execution would continue as scheduled. Some considered it a turning point in that race, hardening a soft public image. Others tend to cite the execution as an example of what they perceive to be Clinton's opportunism, directly influenced by Michael Dukakis and his response to CNN's Bernard Shaw when asked during a campaign debate on October 13, 1988 if he would be supportive of the death penalty were his wife to be raped and murdered. Dukakis responded that he would not; some critics felt he framed his response too legalistically and logically, and did not address it sufficiently personally.


:popcorn:

Who has gotten violent when not properly medicated, its one of the things that makes me very sad about Bill.

However Obama has signed no such death warrants and if asked if mentally ill people or the mentally diabled should be executed would probably be against it. I'm just pointing to an example.

Do we really want the Kitty Dukakis question asked of our candidate in a debate or even worse the children question?

But no, we don't want to go there.

And I fully agree with your post.
It's a shame that this country is so angry and gullible, and that good candidates have to take bad stands in public to succeed.

Best wishes to your sibling and family.

I worked in a juvenile hall facility for awhile with mildly to moderately emotionally disturbed kids.

He's in a controlled enviroment and a very good group home.

However he did hit me once about 8 years ago with a graphite golf driver (which broke against my skull) and caused me to go blind in my right eye for a day and gave me one very nasty concusion. I visit him once to twice a month my parents go every week. Only complaint is he loves Wal-Mart and insists we go everytime.

question in 1996 when Weld posed it without having to give up his integrity.
" If there was a standout moment, it came in the first debate when the governor challenged Kerry, a death penalty opponent, to tell the mother of a slain police officer why her son’s killer should not be executed.

Glaring across the stage, Kerry responded, “I know something about killing � I don’t like killing.” As a hush fell over historic Faneuil Hall, the decorated Vietnam veteran said the “scum” who kill police officers should spend the rest of their lives in prison. But, Kerry went on, “I don’t think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing.”

for the record Rector had diminished facilities after he committed his crime (and a failed suicide attempt ended up removing part of his brain).

Why he was being executed or even that he was being executed.

He left his pie from his last meal for "later" which is something I could see my brother doing.

and happy in prison? Sex, drugs, rock and roll? There was a video of him a few years ago...

I got into an argument with a new democrat co-worker concerning the treatment of Prisoners in America.

She was bitching some people have TVs and privelages.

I explained to her by giving someone a privelage after good behavior you can take it away for bad behavior which causes Prison violence and Guard assualts to decrease.

She came to my side after I explained that to her.

He had breasties growing as I recall, and was snorting cocaine with his friend in the video. I think later her was killed in prison.



Richard Speck confessed for the first time to the 1966 murders of eight student nurses in Chicago on a prison-made videotape, portions of which have aired on WBBM-Channel 2 this week.

The 1988 tape also appears to show Speck and another inmate snorting cocaine at the Stateville Correctional Center. Unaired portions purport to show Speck and another inmate having sex.

The tape outraged state Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton), who said, "Something is very wrong at Stateville." He has scheduled a legislative hearing for next week.

"It should not have happened," said Illinois Corrections Director Odie Washington of the in-prison taping and the purported drug and sexual activity it shows.

it sure shows the difference in ages when some people remember Speck for the video and other remember him for his horrific crimes.

The murders took place in 1966, the video was taped in 1988 but not released until 1996. Speck died of a heart attack in 1991.

I was a kid in '66 and we had a black and white TV with three stations. No Fox news. Good times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck

on tape, and with breasts! I didn't know you could get those in prison.

...death penalty opponents.

I taught in a juvenile justice center for four years and the kids' lives were so terrible that many felt more secure in the system.

Not that it applies directly here, but I believe a mass murderer like Speck with a life sentence ought not to be afforded access to drugs, cameras, or breasts.

I can't even get breasts most of the time.

:rofl:

And is the same crap now. In some ways worse as it is more abstract and more easily argued. It even extends the barbarism/ posturing.
So much for higher ground.

Which Mentally Retarded person did Obama sign the death warrant for?

not specifics.

He is not a governor so has been spared those kinds of politically expedient (some would say necessary) decisions.

is the fact that Bill Clinton was still in the early stages
of trying to win the nomination.

People who criticize Clinton for allowing Rector to be executed are uninformed. He did the right thing.

Here are the FACTS:

(1) Clinton executed NO one. He was the governor of a state that legally (morally is another thing) imposed the death penalty on Rector. It was Clinton's DUTY as governor to allow the execution, not his choice.

(2) It wasn't Clinton who scheduled Rector's execution during the campaign. When the date rolled around, Clinton was campaigning, but he went to Arkansas to make himself available to hear any last minute legal pleas and/or to review any last minute evidence. That was the compassionate and responsible thing to do. Note that it is something Smirk could never be bothered to do.

(3) Rector was NOT RETARDED! (This is the one that bothers me most.) The only people who ever claimed Rector was retarded were Clinton-hating, wingnut Republicans. The right-wing made up that spurious charge, the right-wing news media picked it and repeated it, and intellectually lazy people believed it -- still believe it to this day, even here at DU, where we should know better.

Read the Wikipedia article cited in the OP and you'll see that Rector was NOT retarded when he cold-bloodedly gunned down three men for no reason, killing one of them. Or when he killed another man as few days later. The second man was a cop, a personal boyhood friend of Rector's, who had come to Rector's mother's house to let Rector turn himself in and avoid a gunfight. When his lifelong friend turned away for a second, Rector shot him in the back of the head.

Rector was NOT retarded -- not mentally impaired in any way -- when he did these things. He was just mean as a snake.

It was only AFTER he did his murders that Rector became brain-damaged (not retarded, 'brain-damaged"). And that happened because Rector put a bullet through his OWN head rather than face the music. His 'brain damage' was entirely self-inflicted!

When he did his crimes, Rector was in full possession of all his mental faculties. The courts in Arkansas said he should be held responsible for those crimes, not escape punishment for them by injuring himself.

Clinton, always a believer in capital punishment, felt that Rector had been fairly charged and convicted. That being true, it was his legitimate duty to allow the execution to be carried out -- after giving Rector every legal opportunity to avoid his fate.

It burns me up when I see right-wing talking points quoted as truth here on DU by ostensible liberals who, when it comes to the Clintons, seem to be almost unforgiveably uninformed.

would be something like asserting that

"Clinton, always a believer in capital punishment"

Was it worth it?

1) I oppose the death penalty...I also oppose abortion , euthanasia, and unjust wars...I therefore could not serve on a jury where the death penalty was an option, choose euthanasia or abortion for myself or a loved one

2) But we live in a pluralistic society and have free will...

3) I won't be attending any candy light vigils for condemned murders (nor) will I be celebrating their deaths...

4) Ricky Ray Rector was of sound mind when he committed the acts...

5)I'm not running for president...Obama said what he had to say or what he said he think he has to say...

6) I think Tim Kaine takes the stand that he personally opposed to the death penalty but is duty bound to carry out the laws of his state which include the death penalty for murder...That's the stand I would take...

may support the death penalty in the abstract, but would so restrict the rules of evidence that in fact the penalty never would be carried out. He did reform death penalty laws in Illinois.